Hello!
Hardware: 2 servers, hardware is more or less identical
Server 1: Ubuntu 20.04 (xen 4.11, Kernel 5.4, Linux Bridge)
AMD EPYC 7702P 64-Core Processor
BCM57416 10G NIC
dom0 has 4 vCPUs
Server 2: VMware ESXi 7.0
AMD EPYC 7543P 32-Core Processor
BCM57414 NetXtreme-E 10Gb/25Gb
VM: Ubuntu 20.04, 8vCPUs. Running Knot DNS name server. I am doing benchmark tests against a VM running either on XEN or VMware.
In both cases no tuning (no cpu pinning …).
The XEN VM: 170.000 qps
The ESX VM: 575.000 qps
So, the XEN VM is much slower than the VMware VM. I thought this is because the XEN VM is "good old" PV. So I repeated the test with type=pvh but the results were the same. I did
some more tests:
When I test with a name server which is CPU intensive, then VMware is only a bit faster. But if the workload is more network-heavy (pps), then VMware is much more faster.
I have read
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Network_Throughput_and_Performance_Guide but there are so many things and I do not know which of them are still relevant, or where to start.
Are there some general advices where to start debugging and tuning (ie are there know network bottlenecks)? Or is XEN known to be slower than VMware in network througput (then I
could just stop tuning).
Thanks
Klaus
--
Klaus Darilion, Head of Operations
nic.at GmbH, Jakob-Haringer-Straße 8/V
5020 Salzburg, Austria
